Thursday, December 5, 2013

Way down deep.

Sometime in October you start to see it coming. The last leaves fall, then brown on the ground. Frosty mornings become the norm. Out of town crowds start to fade, and not just when it rains.

There's an incredibly sweet and ever shrinking window around here--after the trails empty out but before they get buried.

Skippy and I rallied to leave braaaaaap marks in the hero dirt on Tuesday, knowing that the weatherman had said it could all come crashing down that night.

One for the record books: December 3 at 5500' near the Colorado/Utah border:

Alas, the weatherdude was right: Buried.

Can't hardly complain--the season was long and good, and we *need* the moisture.

We gave it a day to freeze and settle, then tentatively probed the edges of the backyard to see what we could see.

All in all, not bad, not awesome.

It *is* riding, albeit not the grin-inducing stuff we take for granted much of the time.

We saw precisely zero other riders during our few hours out. My guess is that they, like me, need a few days to recalibrate themselves to the new normal, to dig down into the depths, or wherever it is that our motivation goes when it gets cold and sloppy and slow. When maintaining traction while pedaling uphill starts to feel closer to powerlifting than spinning.

I don't have a smarmy, cliched, Norman Rockwell way to tell you that riding is still worth it in winter.